The Lovers
(Liang zhu)

To complete her education and marry her to a senior civil servant, the family of Zhu Yingtai send her off to a boys’ college where she has to disguise herself as a boy. She draws close to Liang Shanbo and the two form a fun-loving duo. But their friendship soon turns into love and upsets the plans of the dreadful Yingtai family. An adaptation of a classical Chinese story, The Legend of Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai or The Butterfly Lovers (which also inspired Li Han-hsiang’s The Love Eterne), The Lovers is a magnificent new proposal from Tsui Hark – a rare film that delays to the utmost the tragic outcome of the original, using slapstick digressions, joyful songs and playful scenes, and conveys the idea that love is born above all out of companionship. MM